Phase 1 and Phase 2 reports
Children’s Voices in Surrogacy Law (CVSL) is a project where we collected and analysed children’s and young people’s views on their experiences of surrogacy law.
Phase one
Phase one of the project involved children and young people aged 8-17 born through surrogacy, as well as the children of surrogates. We used a specially designed deck of playing cards in the focus groups to explain words, to ask questions and to play voting and sorting games! The goal was to hear their views about the current law and the extent to which law reform was required.
It was really important to do this research because there have been recent calls to change the law on surrogacy. This was the first time that the views of children and young people about surrogacy law reform were collected in these ways. We wanted to try to make sure that children and young people who had direct experience of surrogacy had their opinions heard.
Phase One was presented to two law reform bodies, the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission in September 2022, and was cited in their Report on surrogacy law reform in March 2023.
Phase two
Phase two of the project involved children and young people from primary and secondary schools with no experience of surrogacy aged 8-18. The goal was to compare their views to the views shared in Phase One.